Chip Kelly is a football maniac, and get this, he thinks his team can play faster.
While addressing the media today after getting his first victory as an NFL coach, Kelly said that “the pace of the offense was too slow, and that they can go faster” according to Birds 24/7.
Chip Kelly feels like Monday's pace was too slow. http://t.co/Zr07jtRkce
— Tim McManus (@Tim_McManus) September 10, 2013
“No I feel like it was slow to be honest with you. I’m not joking,” said Kelly. “We need to do a better job. We left the ball on the ground too much, we didn’t get the ball to the officials. We could have sped things up from a process in between plays, and that’s something that we need to continue to work on.”
I watched the presser, and Kelly was dead serious. It’s hard to imagine the Eagles going any faster. They ran 53 plays in the first half, and almost ran the Skins out of their own building.
Still, Kelly wants it faster.
“We’ve got to practice it a little more. We do lot of things at such a rapid tempo,” said Kelly. “I think our guys understand tempo and do that pretty good but we also have to learn how to practice playing it the other way. Really from a mindset standpoint, we do everything 90 miles an hour, then you’ve got to go back driving through the city streets, you can’t drive 90 miles an hour anymore, you’ve got to kind of slow it down and make sure you can still negotiate the turn.”
Kelly wouldn’t speak about anyone else’s team, but assured everyone that the Eagles could keep the pace up.
“I don’t know, and it would be very presumptuous of me to talk about the shape of other teams because I have never watched them train. But I know our team is in shape and I know how we train and we’re pretty specific in how we do that,” said Kelly. “I believe we can keep up what we are doing right now just because we have been doing this since April. I think if you’re going to wait for the week before you play us to say, ‘Hey, we’ve got to get some extra sprinting in’ then I think it’s too late.”